funky frontyard farmers

In january of 2011, Our family of five (now 6) lived off garden produce from our suburban front yard for one week, and we didn't loose any weight...unfortunately. It was an experience that changed the way we thought about food and the value of a suburban garden. Since then we have extended our sustainable food production beyond our suburban front yard, and into our local community and neighbourhood, beginning a community orchard and local food swap. One front yard just isn't enough!

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Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Our one tonne challenge is over. For 365 days we have weighed and recorded everything that we have harvested from our frontyard garden. Everything from eggs laid by the chookies, potatoes, apples, artichokes, tomatoes, chillies, garlic, cucumbers, zucchinis, pumpkins, herbs, salads, lemons and much much more.

All of the children have lent a helping hand, picking nasturtiums, strawberry guavas and tamarillos, (some even got weighed before they were eaten!) heading inside, balancing it on the scales, climbing up on the bench and writing it on our wall of blackboard......

Over a kilo a day from a normal suburban yard ain't bad, and, while we were a little shy of our one tonne goal (which we are still determined to conquer), it just goes to show the value of a regular suburban lawn, if you dig it up and grow veggies instead. We calculated the average price per kilo for our top ten veggies based on the prices of Coles (shudder) and realized that (if we ever shopped there) we would have saved close to $4000 in fresh produce over the year!

this year our 2 big players, the grapefruit and oranges didn't fruit, nor did our bananas and all of our nectarines were lost to pesky possums and parrots....grrr next time gadget, next time! But our big winners this year have been lemons, sweet potatoes, yakon, potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes.

On the bright side we did harvest over 90kg of pumpkins from just 3 vines! We were also surprised to realise we harvested over 900 eggs from the ladies over the year.

When we started our one tonne challenge we were only growing in the front-half of our frontyard (about 70 square metres of space). As the year progressed so did our desire to utilise all of the space we have so we covered the bottom drive and the rest of what remained of our front lawn with woodchips and manure to increase our growing space by another 20 sq metres.

Now that the only lawn we have is a narrow path to the front gate, we feel that we can finally, and in all honesty, call ourselves "frontyard farmers"!

Our front lawn...

After harvesting the pumpkins in the drive we realised it was the perfect space for a polytunnel...well a mini, home-made one. Using bamboo harvested from a friend's backyard, some zip-ties, clear plastic and a few star pickets, we constructed what has been a very handy little greenhouse for under $50.

So what's next you might ask? We are going to do it all again. With all the new growing space, we are curious as to how close we can get to the illusive 1 tonne. But its not about getting as much as we can from the space that we have, rather its about making the most of it, and making it better than how we found it. In a funny way its a habit, but also we find it insightful and rewarding, to fully appreciate it... the preparation of a bed, improving the soil, planting a seed, watching it grow through the seasons, and finally harvesting it for our family table.

Putting them to Work
Good ol' fashioned, hard work is rewarding. For adults, preparing a bed for planting, trudging wheel barrow after wheel barrow of manure in to your garden or back breakingly planting out 150 spring seedlings - whilst you finish up exhausted, sore and a little more stinky, you're rewarded with a great sense of satisfaction, these days, our daily routines of roaring back and forth to work in the traffic and sitting in front of a computer screen all day rarely leaves us with a sense of satisfaction. It's the same for kids, they thrive on hard work, having a challenge, getting dirty and achieving a daily goal. Not sitting in front of an x-box, an ipad or the tv, these empty things don't satisfy kids.

Our kids have daily jobs that they do every day, like many kids out there. We have linked these jobs to our family needs on purpose, so the kids know that their contribution is an integral part for the whole family's lifestyle. It's important not to deprive your children from the satisfaction that comes from hard work, no parent sets out with this intention. Our 9 year old son knows that when he feeds the chooks each morning, with grain, greens, scraps, clean water, collecting the eggs and cleaning out the coup, that the ladies will lay and we will get to enjoy their eggs. the smile on his face as he weighs them and puts them in the fridge is priceless.

Our 7 year old daughter rather prides herself as the domestic goddess, choosing to clean the family bathrooms each morning, wiping the basin, sweeping the floor, changing hand towels, returning tooth brushes to drawers etc, her completed job reinforces tidiness and a sense of each of us looking after each other in our home.

The two youngest, 5 and 3 year olds, water the seedlings each morning between 6:30-7am. They empty the compost into worm holes and water the entire patch. This means cold fingers from using the hose, hurrying up with breakfast and being responsible with water usage, turning off taps and checking over the garden. By doing their job properly then the seedlings thrive, can be planted and then harvested for our family, they are very aware of this.

work is bliss!

Whats growing in the patch

With Spring just around the corner we wanted to test-drive a few new varieties of veg. We're trialing a row of Siberian tomatoes that are already in the ground (mid Aug). These tomatoes are reported to be v tolerant to cool conditions but we doubt they're tolerant to frost, so we're expecting they'll be a good choice for the start and end of tomato season to extend the growing period - we'll report back and let you know how they go.

the new beds, prepped for our Siberian visitors

The coolest cukes for 2015 would have to be painted serpent cucumbers and Cuca-melons which are actually a miniature watermelon...yum. On the bean front we're excited about growing the Madagascan Lima bean which is a perennial, said to be prolific in its 2nd and ongoing years. They also make an outstanding falafel and are said to be a good alternate to fava beans for warmer climates. Asparagus peas (also known as the winged pea) are next on our trial radar which as they suggest have a similar flavor to asparagus. We've also been growing a range of radish over the winter including Japanese daikon, hailstone (both white varities) and French breakfast. Interestingly enough we've noticed that slugs are quite attracted to the French breakfast but seem to mostly leave the others alone.

Hawaiian Guavas... wonderful colour!

An oddity that we're given recently and are also thinking about trialing is a pea bean cross, or Pean, which we think is more commonly known as Hyacinth bean or Lablab. I don't know if the guy that gave them to us was trying to knock us off, but our initial research suggests that they may be rather poisonous, if not boiled repeatedly.... hmmm....worth doing your research! Has anyone else heard of the mysterious Pean? Love to hear from you Pean experts out there.

Next time, more on Black soldier fly, and some ideas about a virtual community farm in the Mountains.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

With the end of summer upon us and only 130 days left in our latest Urban food production challenge (to see how many KG's of organic food we can grow on our suburban block of 750 square metres) we have just passed 233Kg of home grown food. Not bad huh?

Since summer started we have barely bought any fresh produce, bar the occasional bunch of bananas, some onions, and the odd bag of shrooms that have crept into the trolley, but other than that our family have been more than satisfied with what we have grown in our garden. The kids have devoured tamarillos in their lunchboxes every day since school started again and the road-side apples we picked a few months back (they store really well wrapped in newspaper, certainly fresher than most of the apples in the big supermarkets). They've eaten heirloom tomatoes straight off the vine or helped themselves to crispy cucumbers as a snack. In the kitchen we've cooked and prepared seasonal produce; salad greens, radicchio, basil, mint, leeks, beetroot, sweet potato leaves, nasturtiums just to name a few - breakfasts of warm sourdough with a parsley, tomato, basil and nasturtium bruschetta mix, served with a poached egg straight from the laying ladies, is what life is all about.
Now with the cooler weather we are looking forward to roasting, souping and baking this season's produce, sweet potatoes, potatoes, parsnips, pumpkins roasted with our own garlic and rosemary and our neighbour's honey and baking citrus tarts and pumpkin scones for afternoon teas. As a society, many people don't even consider purchasing and eating seasonal produce. Watermelon in June? Coriander in July? "Folks, this ain't normal!" The questions are , where is your food coming from? What's been done to it to allow it to grow out of season? Or how many kilometres has it travelled to be there? And why aren't we supporting local farmers and fresh, seasonal food?

While we won't reach the magic "1 tonne" (this year) we are still hoping to reach close to a kilo of food for every day of the year... but the quantity of kilo's isn't really what counts. The point of this experiment is to explore what we can do with the space that we have, to get others thinking about how we can boost our local food security by growing our own food, and realising that food is our own responsibility, not that of the industrialized globalised petroleum guzzling, mass producing, off shore food monsters that we have all unwittingly become dependent upon. We say its high time to stick a home grown purple carrot up their bum!

The Crop and Swap (Four years old!)

In April we will have ended our fourth season of the Crop and Swap (our local food swap with now over 300 registered members). Much of the locally grown food produce this season has been outstanding in quality and variety. Beetroots, breads, brassica's, honey, tomatoes, tamarillo's, turnips, parsnips, you name it, someone has dared to grow it in their backyard this year!

Not only is the swap still growing strong, it has brought our community together in a way we never really expected. We have made some fantastic friends, learned enormous amounts about gardening, shared plants, seeds, laughs and tears, and collectively shared thousands of kilos of locally grown and home-made food. Beyond even this, we have held countless workshops on chooks, worms, microbes, pests, fertilizers, jams, and even fungi (each by different members of the community). We have held socials, and shared resources.

The swap has even encouraged the development of new networks between neighbours, starting their own initiatives such as gardening working-bees, sharing firewood, and even pig shares! Oink!

Bottom line, the Swap has changed us, and everyone else who has shared in it. Its captured local imaginations, and made each of us realise the worth that each person can offer to their community. Some swappers have even taken the brave step to quitting their jobs and moving into the organic food industry... Isn't that amazing? If there is one thing that you can do to really build a sense of community food networking and security in your own community, we would very much recommend that you start your own food swap in your local hood!

So here's to the Swap, 4 years on, and going strong!

Experiments in the Patch
As always, just when you think you have settled on the best way to set up your veggie patch, you find an even better one, but that's the fun of gardening I guess, and we are always experimenting with new and more efficient ways to grow our veggies. Recently we have come across two concepts that have changed the way we grow.
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Bird netting saved most of our veggies after a massive hail storm

The first is called "SPIN" farming, which stands for "small plot intensive farming". The system is very popular in the States, and basically looks at how urban farmers can make a commercial profit from a small plot of land, growing high value crops in quick succession. The growing rows are about 80cm wide by approx 7 m long. This is so that you can easily straddle the beds and water them with a regular garden hose. A guy by the name of Curtis Stone (not the b grade Aussie celebrity chef (?)) has been making a successful business out of farming people's front yards and backyards, delivering greens to local cafe's. Very cool and worth researching.

The second concept is "No Till" gardening. This method follows the basic principle that turning your soil ruptures the micro and macro habitats beneath the soil, including the complex networks between worms, insects, microbes and fungi. If you have ever watched "Horton Hears a Who" you will get this principle straight away. Soil that is undisturbed is teeming with life, while soil that is turned and disrupted regularly quickly becomes baron, needing chemical supplements to remain fertile. Many farmers are now moving toward a no till method, and so have we. We simply add organic matter, like compost, chook and horse manure, coffee grounds from local cafes and wood ash, then cover with mulch. the worms do the tilling for us.

Worm bombs and fish guts
Speaking of worms, one of the new things we have been doing in the garden is "Worm Bombing". As you may already know, worms do heaps of really cool stuff below the soil that improves plant growth, like unlocking available nutrient, aerating the soil, improving water retention, increasing good bacteria, eating naughty nematodes, and increasing root growth; so why not add them to the soil as you plant?

Before planting out our new seedlings, we raid one of our 7 in-ground worm holes and scoop out a good handful of wriggly wormies. With each seedling that we plant, we make a hole (with our trusty upturned beer bottle), drop in a 'worm bomb' (a ball of worm castings and worms) then plant the seedling. Not only have our plants been growing faster and healthier, but the soil is starting to pump with worms. Give it a go.

The addition of worms works super well with the no dig/till method. by continuously adding more organic matter to the top of your beds, your garden becomes one gigantic worm farm.

We have also been using our worm wee as a foliar spray for our veg. Worm wee is not only packed with nutrient, but also beneficial bacteria, which improve nutrient uptake and reduce disease in plants. For the brave, who want to get serious about microbes in the patch, and aren't squeamish about fish guts, read on.

Our mate Craig, from the food swap, makes a brew from old fish guts, kelp, molasses and worm castings. Fear not, he has a background in microbiology and knows his stuff. The first step is to blend up some fish offal and leave it to break down in a bottle with a loose lid (somewhere far, far away from the house). After about 3 months its ready to use. Add a cup of fish soup, a few tea spoons of kelp, a jar of molasses and about 20 litres of water to a large bucket. Add a stocking with plenty of worm castings and a rock or two, so that it sinks to the bottom, then turn on the fish pump and leave it to bubble away for a couple of days. Amazingly, it doesn't smell at all, and is packed with good bacteria for the patch. spray it on the veg or water it on the soil to give your plants a super pro-biotic boost!

198 seedlings
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these 198 trays have been fantastic!

A while back, my bro-in-law gave us a whole lot of seedling trays (for tree seedlings). They have been great, but because they are quite deep, they take up a lot of seedling mix. Having visited a couple of farms recently, the common seedling tray that is used for vegetable seedlings is called a "198", because it has 198 shallow seedling pods, so we got ourselves a few trays. 6 litres of seedling mix is enough to easily fill two trays (396 seedlings), which equates to about 3 cents per seedling for the mix, rather than 120 seedlings that we were potting with out bigger seedling trays.

In the pursuit of even more veggies, we have decided to say farewell to what remains of the front lawn, and drive way, and put in another 9 rows of growing space, and maybe even a poly tunnel! So the 198's will be getting quite the workout over the coming season.

Beautiful beans

Who needs diamonds, when you can have beans. These Molly Zebra and Scarlet Runner beans are as beautiful as little jewels; tiny kidney shaped miracles of creation that awaken a sense of child-like wonder in anyone who gazes upon them. We always used to be blasé about beans until this season, when we afforded them a whole bed row unto themselves. Beans (we have discovered) are delicious! There are so many wonderful, and beautiful varieties of beans, and if you can't manage to eat them all fresh off the vine, you can easily dry them and store them for winter soups, or planting next season.

Although the summer months have passed, we still have plenty of pumpkins to harvest and loads of sweet potatoes, yacon tubers, potatoes, and Jerusalem artichokes, not to mention the winter citrus season ahead. How many more kilo's can we grow in 130 days???